Free the Outlaws Of Mesquite (Ss) (1990) by Louis L'amour

Marty, who stepped into a chair and tripped. Before he could regain his balance, Stoper was on him with a smashing volley of punches. Mahan staggered and Yannell was all over him, his face set in a mask of fury, his punches smashing and driving. Yet somehow Mahan weathered the storm, covered and got in close. Grabbing Yannell by the belt with one hand and a knee with the other, he upended the furious puncher and dropped him to the floor.
    Stoper came up with a growl of rage and Mahan smashed a left and right to the face. The left went to the mouth, to Stoper's already bleeding lips, and showered him with blood. Marty stepped to the side and avoided a right, then countered with a wicked right to the wind.
    Yannell gasped and Mahan stabbed a left, then hooked hard to the face. Stoper bulled in close and the two men stood toe to toe amid the wreckage of smashed crockery and threw punches with both hands.
    Both men were big and both were powerful. Stoper weighed well over two hundred and Mahan scaled close to the one-ninety mark. Both were in excellent shape.
    Stoper roared in close and grabbed Marty. They went to the floor. Stabbing at Mahan's eyes with his thumbs, Stoper missed and fell forward just as Marty smashed upward with his head. Blinded by pain, Stoper was thrown off, and then Marty lunged to his feet.
    Stoper got up, blinking away the tears the smash had brought to his eyes. Mahan measured him with a left, then hooked right and left to the body.
    Yannell shook his mane of tawny hair and swung a powerful, freckled fist. It missed, and Marty hit him again in the middle. The big rider stooped and Mahan slugged him twice more and the big man wilted and went to the floor.
    "Who's yellow, Yannell?" Marty said then.
    He mopped the sweat from his brow with a quick motion of his hand and stepped back. "Get up if you want more.
    You can have it."
    "I'll get up!" Stoper gasped, and heaved himself erect.
    Mahan stared at the swaying, punch-drunk rider.
    Stoper's eyes were glazed; blood dripped from his smashed lips and from a long cut over his eye. A blue mouse was rising under the other eye. His ear was bleeding. Marty stepped back and dropped his hands.
    "You're no fighter," he said dryly, "an" too good a rider to beat to death!" He turned abruptly and walked out of the cafe.
    Yannell Stoper brushed a hand dazedly across his eyes and stared after him in drunken concentration, trying to make sense of a man who would walk away from a helpless enemy. He shook his big head and, turning, staggered blindly to a chair at a vacant table. He slumped into it and rested his head on his arms.
    The second day of the rodeo was a study in delay.
    Despite his beating of the night before, Yannell Stoper looked good. His face was raw and battered, but physically he seemed in good shape and he was fast and smooth. Marty Mahan, working to absolute silence from the crowd, won the finals in the calf tying by bettering his previous time by a tenth of a second.
    Stoper was second.
    Stoper won the steer wrestling, and took the finals in the bareback bucking contest.
    Marty came out on Old Seven-Seventy-Seven, a big and vicious Brahma bull who knew all the tricks. The bull weighed a shade more than a ton and had never had a stiff battle. He came out full of fight, bucking like a demon, swiveling his hips, hooking left and right with his short, blunted horns, fighting like mad to unseat the rider who clung to the rigging behind his hump. Marty was going and he was writing over both flanks, giving the big Brahma all the metal he could stand.
    Old Seven went into a wicked spin, then suddenly reversed. The crowd gasped, expecting the speed of it to unseat Mahan, but when the dust cleared, Marty was still up there, giving the bull a spur-whipping he would never forget. The whistle blew and Mahan unloaded with a dive. But Old Seven wasn't through by a whole lot. He wheeled like a cat on a hot stove and came for Marty full tilt. Mahan swung around, and then the